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“Ugh, they’re doing it again…” Lance hung halfway off the couch, watching Shiro and Keith across the room. They were silently working together, on something Lance couldn’t figure out from this distance, but it would take blindness to miss the way they looked at each other.
“Thank you for the running commentary, Lance,” Pidge threw in, far more preoccupied with the computer in front of them than whatever the red and black paladin might be up to ‘again’.
“Come on, they haven’t spoken a word since they got here. That’s not normal.” The last bit of that was spoken in a harsh whisper as Lance narrowed his eyes, trying to figure them out.
Hunk laughed. “Never thought I’d hear you complain about Keith not talking.”
“Okay, yeah that’s nice, but…” Lance sighed, sliding to the floor ungracefully. “They’re being weird.”
“Ever thought maybe they don’t need to talk?” Pidge raised an eyebrow at Lance’s uncomfortable looking position on the floor.
Lance blinked, processing for a tic before sitting up straight abruptly, staring over at them wide-eyed. “Holy cheese, they’re psychic.”
“Lance, no.” Pidge rubbed at their temples, the recent lack of sleep making it just that much more difficult to deal with him.
“No, no, nope, they definitely are, I mean look,” Lance gestured wildly when the two laughed at seemingly nothing. He rubbed his chin in thought, a grin that promised nothing good spreading across his face. “Now we just need to prove it…”
“Lance…” Pidge began.
“I’m in.” Hunk nodded. Whether he thought they were psychically linked or not, the ship had been rather quiet lately, and this promised to be entertaining.
Besides that, they always seemed to just know where to find each other if anyone was looking for them, and Hunk thought that it could be possible there was some truth to Lance’s whacky theory. After all, they were paladins of giant mechanical sort of psychic lions, so… why not?
Pidge stopped to consider it seriously for a moment, mischief spreading across their expression. “You know what? Yeah. Let’s do this.”
The first challenge had been to get the two apart.
It had taken some wrangling, but they finally managed it… without seeming too suspicious. There was no way they’d suspect anything.
Pidge had convinced Shiro to come help them with designing something to automatically translate Galra upon seeing it (since after 10000 years of conquest, it had become one of the most widespread language systems in use), claiming that his arm could be of use somehow. It… probably could. Either way, Shiro would not know where Keith was when they started the second part of their plan.
Lance, meanwhile, had had no problems goading Keith into a sparring match, claiming that there was no way a ‘dinky little sword’ could hold up against his gun, especially with the practice he’d been getting. At one point, Hunk had thought they’d be down a member of the Voltron team, but Keith had stopped his sword just short of Lance’s head, telling him to go get his armor, since he’d clearly need it when he kicked his ass.
At this point, Hunk seriously questioned the wisdom of Lance’s plan… But it would be fine, Lance wouldn’t actually be fighting him. If everything went according to plan, the only danger would be Keith murdering him afterwards.
Keith waited in the arena, stretching his arms above him. Lance sure was taking a while to get his armor on… He was put immediately on guard when the door slid shut with a resounding clang.
“Uh… Hunk?” Keith called up to the overseer’s booth.
Instead, Lance’s voice sounded over the intercom. “Slight change in plans. Hunk had to… uh… go do something, so I’ll run the simulation from up here. You’d get your butt kicked either way, and I’m kinda tired…”
“Lance…” Keith scowled, knowing this couldn’t end well.
“Okay, well… how does level 50 sound to you? I can’t find a button for a higher one, so here we go!”
“Lance!”
Pidge hadn’t known what they’d been expecting, but when Shiro suddenly stilled, stood, and bolted for the door, they’d barely been able to keep up.
There was no way…
But sure enough, Shiro had made a beeline for the training area, where Keith was veritably fighting for his life. The multiple bots were attacking Keith, who was barely holding his own (aka keeping his head attached to his shoulders) and the simulation refused to end, even when Keith yelled for it to. Pidge suddenly seriously questioned Lance’s methods…
“Keith!” Shiro jammed his mechanical hand against the door panel, quickly overriding the lock so the door slid open.
Keith was thankfully close enough that Shiro could grab the back of his uniform and yank him back through the doorway, and he didn’t remember punching a hole in one of the robots that had gotten a little too close, but it was certainly there. Suddenly, the others deactivated, leaving just the three paladins.
Shiro knelt in front of Keith, who shed his helmet, the dent in the side pushing against his skull uncomfortably.
“Are you okay?” Shiro held both sides of his face, looking into his eyes to try and determine it for himself.
Keith nodded, still too winded to form words, but otherwise sound.
Shiro looked up at the youngest paladin, who was shifting in place nervously. “Get Lance down here.Now.”
Pidge scrambled to get the blue paladin, not willing to trifle with the venom in Shiro’s voice.
“What were you thinking?” Shiro rounded on Lance, furious that he would endanger Keith so easily. Besides possibly killing his teammate (and costing them Keith), Lance had just put everything they’d worked for at risk; four lions couldn’t make Voltron. And for what? He’d never thought that the petty rivalry could become this, of all the irresponsible—
“I left the safety on…” Lance mumbled, staring at his feet where he sat. He’d never seen Shiro this openly angry, and especially not at him… though he guessed it made sense. “It’d have phased out before a lethal blow…”
Shiro sighed, rubbing at his face agitatedly as he tried to calm down. Okay. Okay, fine, Keith hadn’t been in any mortal danger. But he was in danger of nearly having a heart attack because of these two…
Keith had finally caught his breath, his pulse lowering back into normal range as he stood on shaky legs and approached Shiro’s side, running a hand up his human arm to help him calm down. Extreme negative emotions (especially fear) could have some unwanted side effects where Shiro was concerned. The arm slipped around his waist, pulling him closer as Shiro pressed his forehead against his hair, working to calm himself.
Trying to save face, Lance started to ramble. “But hey, won’t do it again because I mean you proved me right, Keith was in danger, or thought he was, and you came running so obviously there’s a connection there—probably psychic—but anyway you don’t have to worry anymore, because the hypothesis was proven and I don’t really think we need a repeat experiment after what could have happened because, clearly putting Keith in dangerous situations is not on your list of approved group bonding activities, and—mmfph!”
Pidge had reached over and covered Lance’s mouth, for which he was mostly grateful, because he didn’t know how to stop talking once he was nervous.
“Psychic?” Keith stared at them.
“Just ignore him.” Pidge ignored the noise of protest Lance made behind their hand. Yeah, Shiro’s reaction had been amazingly spot on, and Pidge was now starting to legitimately question it themself, but it wasn’t worth going into all of that right at this moment. “We really are sorry for scaring you, Shiro.”
After a long breath out of his nose, Shiro straightened, looking at them. “It’s fine. I’m fine. But Lance, you’re on cleaning duty until Coran can’t stand the sight of you.”
“What?” Lance gawked up at him.
“Make that an earth month, understood?” Shiro realized Lance could just try to be as obnoxious as possible to get out of it. “And I will be telling him, so don’t think you can just get around it.”
Lance opened his mouth to object, before reconsidering. “…fine.” He got up and slunk out of the room, definitely ignoring the smirk Keith sent his way. Pidge followed close behind Lance before they could get any share of the punishment.
When they were gone, Keith rested a palm against Shiro’s chest, feeling that his heartrate had mostly evened out.
“So. Psychic, huh?” Keith tilted his head up to look at Shiro. “That’s a new one.”
Shiro shook his head, a quiet chuckle rumbling through his chest. “You want to tell them about the communicators?”
“Nope.” Keith grinned at Shiro, glad his humor was back, meaning the terror had fully faded. “You?”
“Nah… Let’s keep them guessing.”
Nodding, Keith leaned up and pecked a kiss to Shiro’s mouth before turning and heading back to the training room for some real training, knowing that Shiro would join him.